One of the greatest laymen in Brazil is our Brother Thomaz L. da Costa. He is the Superintendent of a very considerable business firm in Bahia. He is a deacon in the First Baptist Church, one of the moving spirits upon the Brazilian Foreign Mission Board and practically superintends the work of the State Mission Board of Bahia.
Years ago he was converted in Rio through the agency of his washerwoman. This faithful woman is a member of the First Baptist Church. She decided she would attempt to lead Thomaz to Christ. So on Saturday when she would bring his laundry she would invite him to come to her house on the following day for dinner. I might say by way of parenthesis, that there is not a steam laundry in Brazil. All of the laundry work is done by hand. Sometimes there is quite a considerable firm which employs many laundresses. Thomaz, after declining the good woman's invitation many times, finally one day decided he would accept it.
On Sunday he appeared at her house for dinner. After the dinner was over she suggested that they, in company with several of her children, should take a stroll through some of the parks. They passed through the great park in the center of the city, and after a while they found themselves in front of a building in which they heard singing. The good woman suggested that they go upstairs into the hall from which proceeded the sounds of the music. They went in, Thomaz not knowing what sort of place it was. Dr. Bagby, the first missionary of our board to Brazil, was conducting a service and soon began a sermon which impressed Thomaz very greatly. The sermon drew such a picture of his life that he accused the woman of having told Dr. Bagby about him. She had not done so, she declared, and this fact impressed Thomaz even more.
Next Saturday, when she brought his laundry, she invited him to take dinner with her again on Sunday, but he was too shrewd for her and declined, saying that he understood her purpose. The message which he had heard in the sermon, however, stayed with him. On the following Saturday the good woman again invited him to take dinner with her on Sunday. He declined. When the third Saturday came, before she had time to extend her usual invitation, he said: "I am coming to dinner with you tomorrow." He went according to promise, and after the meal had been finished, they did not take a round-about course, but went directly to the church, and there the man listened to the gospel again and gave himself to Christ. He has not missed a service since unless providentially hindered. I asked him if he was sorry of the step he had taken and he replied: "No, indeed. It is as Paul says, 'A salvation not to be repented of.'"
There can be but one inevitable result to such faithful witnessing as this. One of the most hopeful signs in connection with the work in Brazil is the fact that a large percentage of the members of the churches endeavor to lead others to Christ in a personal way. A large percentage of them will conduct public services wherever the opportunity can be found. In the First Baptist Church in Rio there are more than twenty men who will go out and conduct public services. They are not skilled preachers. They may have very limited education, but they can take the Book, read it, explain its message through the light of their own individual experiences, and by this means of witnessing to the power of the saving grace of God in their own lives, they are able to lead many to Jesus. Is not this after all the kind of preaching our Lord has sent us into the world to do?
The severest persecution which these Brazilian Christians are called upon to endure is not that which comes to them when they are stoned, or when their property may be destroyed or when their business may be taken away from them through boycotts or when they may be turned into the streets through the bitter hatred of hard-hearted priests, but the most trying persecution is that which comes from the insinuating remark, the sneer of the supercilious and the doubt of the envious. The taunt of hypocrisy is often thrown into the teeth of native Christians. Their motives are frequently impugned. I was profoundly impressed with the answer they usually give to such persecutions. They reply by saying: "See how we live. Note the difference between our careers now and our careers before we became Christians." And this challenge of the life is the one which will finally answer the ridicule and doubt of all who assail them.
CHAPTER XV.
THE TESTING OF THE MISSIONARY.
In thinking of the missionary, most of us dwell upon the heroic self-denial he practices and the bravery with which he faces the gravest dangers. Certainly, the missionary in Brazil is due a good share of such appreciation. He has been called upon to endure shameful indignities, painful personal dangers and the enervating perils of a hostile climate. Our own missionaries have been beaten, stoned, thrown into streams, arrested and haled before courts, shot at and in many instances saved only by the most signal dispensations of Providence. Dr. Bagby, our first missionary, in spite of stoning and arrest when he was baptizing converts in Bahia, kept fearlessly on in his endeavor to lead the people to Christ. Dr. Z. C. Taylor traveled through the interior of Bahia State in perils of robbers, in perils of fanatics, in perils of infuriated priests and in perils of bloodthirsty persecutors without fear or shrinking. In the spring of 1910 Solomon Ginsburg was set upon by a mob at Itabopoana, which opened fire with such perilous directness that one bullet flattened upon the wall a few inches above his head.